It was hailed as one of the best ads to come out of Sunday night’s Super Bowl.

Featuring an epic battle between Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman, the two icons engage a hilarious lip sync feud using the peerless rhymes of Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliott, respectively.

While the end result was a draw, it was a big win for Pepsico, successfully combining Doritos and Mountain Dew into one advert:

However, by late Monday people had long forgotten about the ad. Rather, “Lady Doritos” was trending on Twitter.

But where did it come from?

Well, get this: the concept stemmed from a Freakonomics podcast interview with Pepsico chief executive Indra Nooyi [below], during which she said:

“As you watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don’t want to lose that taste of the flavor [sic], and the broken chips in the bottom.

Women I think would love to do the same, but they don’t.

They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers generously and they don’t like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth. [We ask:] ‘Are there snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently?’ And yes, we are looking at it, and we’re getting ready to launch a bunch of them soon. For women, low-crunch, the full taste profile, not have so much of the flavor stick on the fingers, and how can you put it in a purse?”

Huh? One has to ask, if it doesn’t crunch, is it still crispy?

From there, the idea spread like wildfire,and headlines from major news outlets stated that it was, in fact, happening.

But while Nooyi has a long history of being thoughtful on matters of employee treatment and advancement of women in the workplace, these comments were definitely not in that vein.

One Twitter response hit the nail on the head:

Ellen didn’t let this one slip by without comment:

Pepsi has since denied that it will be manufacturing female-oriented Doritos:

“The reporting on a specific Doritos product for female consumers is inaccurate,” a spokeswoman told Forbes on Tuesday. “We already have Doritos for women–they’re called Doritos, and they’re enjoyed by millions of people every day.”

Thank heavens – personally, I’m a massive Doritos fan, crispy crunch and all.

[source:forbes]